Molly
'Twitter' Twitter is an information sharing network that allows individuals or companies to post and share real-time updates via tweets. Twitter can be an effective marketing tool for companies since it allows companies to instantly share information, products, or promotions with its followers. A study sponsored by the Social Media Success Summit found that Twitter was the top social media site used by marketers, with 86% of marketers using Twitter. There are a number of ways a company can effectively use Twitter as a marketing tool. Using Twitter to Build Your Brand Twitter can be an effective marketing tool for companies to build their brand. It allows companies to quickly disseminate information to followers who are already actively seeking to be more engaged with the company. News, sales, and promotions can be instantly sent to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of followers. There are several pointers to follow for most effectively using Twitter to enhance a company's branding strategy. Personalize. Don't just tweet generic marketing messages. Develop a Twitter personality for your company. Find a way to connect on a personal level with your followers and target tweets to specific followers. This will make customers feel like they are having an interactive conversation with the company rather than just being hit with sales promotions. Don't over tweet. Make the tweets the company does post meaningful. Followers who are overwhelmed with tweets may unfollow the company or lose interest when seeing yet another company tweet. Make your company's tweets current, unique, and relevant. Use #hashtags appropriately. Anyone can post to #hashtags so be sure that they are topics that will not create questionable tweets or generate negative buzz. Be Secure. Hackers can use company twitter accounts to generate negative press. Companies should be sure to have a secure password that is not easy to guess or used for other accounts. Passwords should also be changed frequently. Twitter Contests Twitter contests are an effective way to generate new followers and also use existing followers to promote your brand. Contests quickly generate company or brand interest. There are several ways to successfully implement a Twitter contest. 1. Decide what the contest is promoting. A contest should have a clear end goal in mind. This goal may be to promote a new product, engage new customer interest, or increase exposure of an existing product. 2. Decide on a prize. The prize for a Twitter contest should be geared towards the target audience. If you are seeking to attract a new target audience, the prize should be appropriate to that group. The prize should also be significant enough that it attracts followers. Be sure to announce the prize and winner publicly. 3. Decide if the contest was effective. Companies should be sure that metrics are in place to track the success of the contest. Companies should be able to measure the increase in the number of followers, retweets, etc.. as a result of the contest. This will allow companies to make an educated decision as to whether this type of contest would be effective again in the future. Paid Twitter Marketing Twitter has three "Promote Products" that allow businesses to further target their marketing efforts through paid campaigns. The three services are Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets, and Promoted Trends. All three options increase company exposure by promoting Twitter activities to a broader spectrum of Twitter users, often targeted by either interests or keywords. The services allow promotion through the posting of either tweets or accounts to specific target markets of users, with the goal of increasing company followers. The products are currently being used by primarily large businesses. The promoted services are still expensive, costing approximately $15,000 for a three month campaign, so they have not become accessible to small businesses yet. Twitter hopes to decrease the costs of the promoted services through new products in the future, making the services accessible to businesses of all sizes.